


Regret

by sunsetdawn20



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 09:12:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11597553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetdawn20/pseuds/sunsetdawn20
Summary: She likes him, which makes his life easier. But he likes her too, which makes everything infinitely harder.Part of my Road to Panama collection. Set end of S1 and beginning of S2.





	Regret

**014\. regret**   
The first thing Michael wants to say to her is _“Sorry”_. 

Because he knows that look – that look of running away from something. Most people wouldn’t see it on her, because she’s not like most people, who run and fuck up their lives. Whatever Dr Tancredi is running away from, it is pushing her towards excellence, and Michael knows what that’s like. 

She likes him, which makes his life easier. But he likes her too, which makes everything infinitely harder. 

\---

For the first time in her life Sara wishes she wasn’t so good at piecing together all the parts of the puzzle. It would have been so easy to miss the signs, and a part of her wishes she had. 

Now she had to make a choice and she did. 

A cruel voice in her head questions all the turns she’s taken in her life to get to a point where she’s so utterly, bone-crushingly lonely that a few choice half-smiles from a convict would be enough to make her commit a crime. 

She knows that’s not the whole story, even if that’s all the story anyone will see. 

There was anger too – at her father. And, for the record, she did truly believe in the possibility of Lincoln Burrows’s innocence and if she had chosen differently, she would have actively aided his death. 

Not that any of that matters now. 

\---

In that first moment shame washes over her – thick and heavy and all consuming – because she was never going to be in this situation ever again. There were promises she once made. Some to her father, but she doesn’t care about those, not anymore. It’s the ones she made to herself she mourns. 

She was going to build a fortress from the wreckage of herself and she was going to help others do the same. 

Being back here, on uniform grey chairs and drinking always horrible coffee, fills her with shame. But only for one moment. Because then she notices something. As she was listening to the stories of others, her body eased into the chair, she’s pulled up one leg and rested her chin on her knee. She hasn’t thought of Michael once, or her father, or all the friends she picked up at the last place like this and never had time for and stopped calling. She simply is, in this moment, right here and it’s peaceful to let go and just listen. 

\---

The thing is, he could have watched her from afar. It’s his job and he’s damn good at it, even if he’s not good at much else. He could have deduced within a few days if she has any useful information and that would have been it. 

Instead he’s sitting on one of the uniform grey chairs, wearing a shirt he hasn’t worn in years, and he’s introducing himself as Lance. 

It’s not what Sara is saying, she’s barely talking, really, but there is something in her posture, something in the expression on her face that makes him pay attention. He would have expected her to look small, crumbling in on herself after completely fucking up her life for what? A pair of intense puppy eyes? But Sara doesn’t look broken. She looks disappointed, abandoned, even angry, but not broken. Like she knows how this goes, and she’s tired to start from scratch again, but she also knows what to do and how to get there. 

The first thing Paul notices about Sara is that despite her silence, she’s never small.


End file.
